Studies on High Voltage Composite Insulators under very low Temperature

Abstract

With the advancement in material engineering new insulation materials have been developed with enhanced insulating properties and these materials have certain advantages over glass and porcelain insulators in terms of field performance. Since last decade there is an increase in demand of installing polymer/composite insulator as a preferable choice. These have promising features for high voltage transmission and distribution applications. However, long-term environmental and electric stresses could cause surface degradation and in due course reduce the insulation strength of insulators. In the present work, an attempt is made to study the effect of multiple stresses (humidity, low temperature, UV and electric stress) on the composite insulators. The experimental chamber of 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 ft is suitably fabricated for the experiment. The leakage current is regularly monitored over the experimental duration of 1000 hours. The surface morphological studies using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-Ray Analysis (EDAX), Wettability Class (WC) measurements and performance of tensile strength of the samples are conducted on the samples before and after experimentation.